We are concerned about the creeping authoritarianism; the disregard for human life, especially of the poor and the marginalized; the sanctification of a criminal oppressor; the state of public discourse; for the vitriol afforded by anonymity; and for the way our political lives have regressed into echo chambers. We are, nonetheless, inspired by the persistent efforts of our comrades in the country. We take courage to act, incisively, and in ways that we are in a unique position to do. While we live and work abroad, we keep our eyes, minds and hearts attuned to what is happening in the Philippines. We realize that our distance should not deter us from action; that, as with our access to academic resources and vantage points, and even the security our locations afford us, we should see it as a strength unique to our privileged position.
(From our statement of purpose. alitaptapcollective.wordpress.com/about)
Alitaptap Collective is, first and foremost, a response to developments from the Philippines, by international graduate students. But framed within the ATE Project, the Alitaptap Collective could be understood as action research, as applied to alternative transnational solidarity. There are three strands to our work: Encouraging fellow international graduate students to apply their skills, and their positions, to respond to ongoing developments in the Philippines. At its most basic this involves activating our networks, and getting into conversations about how we might be able to uniquely apply our resources and training. This, in turn, has led to involvement by Alvin Camba, who is doing a PhD in Sociology at Johns Hopkins, and Joshua Makalintal, who recently finished his masters in Political Science at Innsbruck. Part of this, too, is establishing demonstration effects, both to other graduate students and to our non-academic collaborators. We have done this by having a website, and by producing material that shows that the methods and resources at our disposal could be used to surface issues. Under the Alitaptap Collective banner, Christopher Chanco has written commentary for Overland and Dissent, while Kenneth Cardenas has produced investigative work with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.